aroacepagans:

My hot tip for today is that sometimes you can do silly, spiritual pagan things because they’re fun and they don’t have to be particularly logical or relevant in any way. You don’t have to believe in everything 100% to do and enjoy things. 

Every Samhain my mother leaves a plate of food outside. She says that the ancestors come in the form of raccoons to eat it. When I was little I of course wholeheartedly believe this. Now I think we probably just have a lot of raccoons in the neighboorhood, but that understanding doesn’t detract from the tradition. Suspending my disbelief for just one night to think that the animals I see wandering about are visiting spirits makes Samhain a hell of a lot more spooky and mystical then it would be otherwise. I wouldn’t want to do it any other way.

We don’t touch the garden between Samhain and Yule. The explanation given for this is that anything left outside during this time is food for the fairies and taking it angers them. As I’ve gotten older and learned more about gardening I’ve realized that this is probably an explanation for why we need to let the soil rest, and I certainly don’t think picking a plant in early December is going to cause me any harm, but don’t pick the plants anyways. Leaving the garden alone during the cold months makes tending to the plants that much more enjoyable and special during the hot months, and if my reasoning for why I can’t harvest that very last squash of the fall is fairies then that’s my own business.

Sometimes when I go down to the beach I find strange or out of place things. My explanation for these things is always selkies. In the back of my mind, I’m always aware that there’s probably a much more logical and reasonable explanation for whatever I’m seeing but those reasons usually aren’t quite as interesting, so I say that it’s selkies. And that’s fun. I feel like there’s some unspoken rule that after a certain age you’re not allowed to try and believe the things you’ve imagined, no matter how inconsequential and silly those things are and honestly, that’s boring, I’m not a fan.

The point here is that not all of the things we do in the name of our spirituality and faith need to be serious or even well thought out. Clearly, if you’re doing a ritual or a spell that’s one thing, but there are other fun little ways to make your spirituality more magical and wondrous that are less about what’s actually happening and more about the suspension of disbelief. And those things are wonderful and fun, and they add a little bit of joy to your life.

I meet a lot of witches and pagans who take themselves and their practice very seriously, and well that’s fine to a certain extent I think it can sometimes make your spiritual beliefs feel like a chore. Letting yourself have fun this way can be a really good way to prevent that.